In the Sky Was Mirrored Sodom
by HopelessOsaka
Summary: Alfons wonders if Edward understands how he sounds, sometimes, when he speaks of his brother. Alfons Heiderich/Edward Elric. Set in 1921, before Conqueror of Shamballa.


**Pairing:** Alfons Heiderich/Edward Elric

**Summary:** Alfons wonders if Edward understands how he sounds, sometimes, when he speaks of his brother.

**Setting:** 1921, before _Conqueror of Shamballa_

**A/N:** Say A (part)+B+C=D (whole).

What I originally had in my head was: ?+?+C=?

What I ended up with when typing it out was: A+B+?=???!!111

I figured it out, though. I swear.

* * *

**IN THE SKY WAS MIRRORED SODOM**

* * *

"Hey…" says Edward.

His hand reaches out to Alfons, trembling.

Eyes half-lidded, the younger man turns his gaze to him, and meets the golden-speckled irises steadily. They glitter, and only for a moment, he wonders if Edward is diseased. He can imagine the soft, youthful skin of his colleague paling to the sickly color of the burnt rubber hanging over his prosthetic arm; his durable bone becoming hollow, before falling away to dust underneath a grave; Edward's body, robust and diligent, withering away until flesh begins to peel, until the vigorous pink of his cheeks turns into a rawer variety, and until that skin begins to scar red and black and green.

"Hey," says Edward, his voice a little too thick, and his lips cracked, "Alfons, can I… Can I touch you?"

Alfons nearly recoils in disgust. But he smiles, instead.

"Didn't I tell you, Edward?" he reminds him, lightly, "If you wanted to meet with a lady, we should have gone elsewhere. Only bitter men populate this place, with bitter beer."

It is a joke, although it mutates into something hostile. Alfons refuses to raise his voice, although they sit nearly in the alley by their pub. There is dim light and noise exploding from the inside, though it is not warm, and not full of laughter. Another fight, and while there are merely a few loitering about the verandah and on its steps, the ones who tumble out from inside infect the others around them with frenzy.

Alfons does not listen. He looks to his hand, clutching a beer mug, and realizes it is stinging from force. He drops it, and the runny brown fluid spews out from its clattering glass, drenching the dirt that begins to choke and drown from the atrocious flavor and quantity. The beer weeps in rivulets, although no one will grieve for it. The brownness of the glass glistens from dim light, near the steps. Edward's has rolled away even farther.

"Don't," murmurs Edward— "Don't want to meet with women. I want to, my brother," _Find him_, Alfons knows. A boy with his face, his name. But from what he has heard, gathered through unconnected points inside his brain, Alphonse's flesh is softer, without disease, just like his elder brother's. That is all he knows about his colleague, from earlier, because they have been together for barely a few months. He knows enough stories, enough to know that Edward dreams, and Edward hallucinates.

He does not say so. Instead, he leans closer to Edward, as they are sprawled against wooden panels, with one of Alfons' legs tucked in, and the other out, with both of Edward's sprawled out wide. One overlaps another, thrum from the heat of fat and muscle and the coolness of leather-laced plaster.

He says, "Embrace him?" and wonders what other things he knows about Edward Elric. That Edward Elric does not drink, he surely knows.

"Yeah," Edward answers, and it is all but a whisper against his collar, "I want to embrace him, when I find him again… Because before, for the longest time, his body was made of armor. Made of steel and void."

Edward is about to fall asleep against his shoulder. Goosebumps rise on his paper-like skin, and acutely, Alfons notices how close Edward's hand is to curling over his own. He nearly recoils in disgust, but he touches Edward's fingers instead, and smiles a little too widely.

"That sounds positively incestuous," he breathes against straw-colored tendrils, squeezing the young man's fingers tightly.

Alfons wonders why they have come here, although it is not yet Christmas Eve.

* * *

**END**

* * *

1921 Germany _sucked_. No canned beer.

I mildly researched what material prosthetics from roughly their time period would be composed of, but it is probably still erroneous on that account.

Also, having a golden ring around the iris is apparently a tell-tale symptom of Wilson's disease, as copper accumulates in the body's tissues, and even though I know that Edward's eyes change from golden to a caramel brown color when he crosses worlds, and even though I'm not sure if it would be easy to discern the golden ring, I thought Alfons' contemplation of something like that would be an interesting idea.

* * *


End file.
